


The Truth Behind the Hellfire Club

by hypersugarroxy



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gakuen, Gen, at least it's supposed to be but you don't have to read it that way if you prefer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-30
Updated: 2015-03-30
Packaged: 2018-03-20 09:12:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3644799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hypersugarroxy/pseuds/hypersugarroxy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Deep in the dungeon, a stubborn young adventurer braves the horrors within, armed only with his wand and refusing to back it up. His companion begins to become rather irritated.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Truth Behind the Hellfire Club

The duo descended the next spiral staircase, still covered in the goo of whatever those blobs were. Arthur held his lit wand aloft in front of him, just barely lighting the floor, revealing whatever treasures he could but mostly it just appeared to be bones. Human, elven, all kinds of bones.

“Hey  I found a gem!” Arthur turned to his partner, finger held to his lips.

“You don’t know what’s down here!” He hissed angrily. “For all we know, you just summoned a boss!”

“Yeah, I don’t,” Mircea said, tossing the gem in the air, a hint of disgust on his face. “That was some guy’s tooth. Actually, where did it go,” he muttered, crouching to look for it. Arthur’s brows met and he dragged Mircea along by the arm. “Hey, I wanted that.”

“Then maybe you shouldn’t have tossed it.”

“Hey," Mircea said, abruptly changing his tone along with the subject, "remember that skeleton upstairs was impervious to magic? Do we actually have any weapons that let us slash shit?”

“I have offensive spells!” Arthur said defensively.

“Did you hear word I just said?” Mircea asked, not bothering to keep the irritation from his voice. “Give me the portal book, I’m going to buy sword.”

“You will stay here! How am I supposed to take on Dragonskulker on my own?”

“Dragonskulker isn’t for another ten levels at least. Give me the book, we need weapons!”

“We have -”

“WE MET SOMETHING IT DOES NOT WORK ON! If you’re so scared of meeting someone you can’t handle on your own, come up to town through book portal. It doesn’t close.”

“We’ll continue on.”

“Are you that insecure in your abilities that you need to die to prove something?” Mircea said flatly, eyeing Arthur’s sack where he kept his reagents and the book of town portals.

“What?” Arthur exclaimed indignantly. “My abilities are fine! Perfectly honed for this mission!  _You’re_ the insecure one! Do you even know how to use a sword?”

“Maybe not a sword. How about an axe?”

“No.”

“Why are you telling me what weapons I can’t wield? I never said you need sword. I just want thing that will save both our ass if we can’t use our wands.”

“You’re getting loud again!”

“They’ll find us eventually,” Mircea muttered under his breath. He followed Arthur through the old dungeon, keeping close to the wandlight.

“Ever think about what we do when we slay the thing?”

“Speaking of, what kind of creature was it again?”

“I was thinking about retiring. Move to small place, maybe stick round town. You have family? Maybe someone else? Back home, I mean.”

“Look. I’m an adventurer mage. I don’t have time for family or frivolity while there’s monsters to be slain.”

Mircea stared at the back of Arthur’s head for a second. “You take this very seriously, don’t you? What’s the point of you with not backstory? No family? Brothers. sisters? Parents? We’re not so old, so maybe no child. You just a wizard, and nothing else?”

“My purpose is to kill the beast or die trying, maybe  _you’re_  the one taking this too seriously.” Arthur scoffed, “Retirement” and said no more.

Silence fell between them. They heard footsteps behind a wall, but the faint ones like this stopped phasing them nearly six levels above. Arthur held his wand higher, right in front of his face. Mircea, still weaponless, decided to take his wand out. It still had slime creature on it, not slick anymore but had become tacky as it dried.

“Fuck.”

“What.”

“Eh, my wand has stick still on it.”

“Sure that’s going to be bloody useful, excellent maintenance of your tool.”

“You can put prent…pert…pre…” Mircea stumbled over the word.

“Are you calling me ‘pretentious’? Maybe you want to stick to insults you know.”

“Here’s one:  _Sa te fut_.”

“SHH.” Arthur slammed his free hand over Mircea’s mouth (really, it was his nose).

“That was a loud ‘sh’.” Mircea whispered before the hand moved south to properly cover the offending cavity.

“Did you hear that?” Arthur said. “That…scuttling.”

“No,” Mircea said through Arthur’s hand; Arthur removed it and Mircea pointed toward the hall to their left. “But I see that.”

Arthur spun to face the direction Mircea indicated. A faint purple and green glow emitted from around a corner and the scuttling got louder, accompanied by small voices.

“Are those imps?”

“Don’t imps usually travel with their shaman?” Mircea asked irritably. “Because they don’t -”

“Quiet. You think your wand can handle this?” Arthur chided.

“I don’t know. You think your magic will hold up against imp with magic in blood?”

“Enough out of you!” Arthur screamed as the imps rounded the corner and caught the mages in their sights. They immediately made a line to eradicate the foreign objects from their dungeon. Arthur cast an ice spell on the forest creature out in front. It fell backward, its comrades not batting an eye. Arthur spit another one, not at the smaller green ones, but at their leader, the purple shaman in the robe. It deflected the ice without a second look. It hit the wall and then one of its underlings.

“Show it flame!” Arthur screamed. Mircea complied, sending the flame ball at the front row of underlings. They stopped momentarily, screeching at the fire engulfing their feet. Almost immediately the flames disappeared and the imps fell to the ground.

“Show the PURPLE ONE flame, you idiot!” Arthur yelled, panicking, throwing more ice.

“It won’t work!” Mircea shouted back, blasting an imp off his leg.

“To hell it won’t! Come on, you have all the fire spells!”

“Do you have lightning?” Mircea blasted another weakly.

“Are these getting stronger?” Arthur asked. Surely it didn’t take nearly this many tries to defeat just four imps earlier?

“That would make the most sense, Arthur,” Mircea said, climbing a barrel.

“What are you doing?!”

Mircea started whacking at imps with his wand. “Mircea! What! Are! You! Doing!?”

“I’m out of mana.”

“Are you kidding?” Arthur said incredulously. “They wiped out your mana?” Arthur sent another ice spell at one. It was weak, fizzling into vapor. Arthur’s heart stopped.

“Looks like they took out yours, too.” Mircea reached out a hand to Arthur to pull him onto the barrel. He instead tore off in the direction of the staircase, dragging Mircea with him.

“You were supposed to -”

“We’ll come back around to it!” Arthur yelled, knowing exactly which turn he messed up on the way back. They ran for another minute, Arthur feeling stamina drain as though he’d sprung a leak. He came to a screeching halt and leaned against the wall, completely out of breath. Mircea wasn’t doing much better, having had to keep pace or else have his legs torn up against the stone floor. He sat on a small chest.

“How long,” Arthur panted out, “until…our man…a…is res…tored?”

“They had potions for mana in town. Along with real weapons, so maybe we don’t have to run from tiny imps?” Mircea said, clearly annoyed.

“Yeah, go ahead, ignore my question.”

“I don’t know. Should we go to Jin? She heals us, we get manas back. I’m not coming back here without weap-”

Footsteps cut them short. Large, slow, heavy ones.

“More imps?” Mircea said, standing, holding a just barely functioning wand aloft, lighting it.

“How stupid are you? Imps would be light and quick. This…whatever it is, is clearly bigger than an imp. Even a herd - tribe? herd?”

Mircea’s eyes grew wide. “So if enemy sees you, is it too late to open the book portal?” The feet came to a stop at the end of the hallway. Beady eyes just barely reflected the wand light from nearly three meters from the ground. A huge furry creature towered over them, nearly twice their size and clearly stronger. It blinked at them and let out an ear-splitting roar. The temperature in the already damp and cold corridor dropped as the duo felt their blood run cold.

It charged. Both mages were scared stiff. Mircea shot a tiny fireball out of his wand at the floor and no more was said of that as the abomination charged the duo and promptly crushed them flat, wands snapped and spines the same way after just four massive blows apiece.

~~~

“Damn it!” Arthur yelled, pounding his fist on the table and sending the game cards flying. Mircea simply watched him, quiet amusement on his face.

“We’d gotten so far that time! Level 34! Only ten away from Dragonskulker!” Arthur hung his head. Mircea picked up the enemy card.

“The card says 14.”

“Isn’t there a revival method? Isn’t the Reaper supposed to show up and play dice with your fate or something?”

“It’s already getting dark. Can we stop now?”

Arthur looked at the window. “How late?”

“I’m going upstairs, Arthur. We’ll play more next week.”

“Oh, come on! We’re so close!”

“Good night, Arthur.” Mircea closed the club door behind him.

“What? Not even going to help pick up the cards?” Arthur called after him. Receiving no answer, he scowled and started putting the game away himself.

“We’re going back to the old one next week,” he said irritably.

**Author's Note:**

> originally from tumblr. based on a thing i like to call "fate-talia", around a late 90's pc game of the same title


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